Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 161 posts

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#121

Post by adsfgiodsnrio »

intalentive wrote: post #52
Timon3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories I'm sure there is a minority that believes this, but the majority know that there is no ideological drive, only a greed one. Alignment with current social issues happens based on calculations of profit, not based on sincere ideological commitment. Making good movies is hard, making movies following current social issues is easy. Both bring money,…

> Alignment with current social issues happens based on calculations of profit, not based on sincere ideological commitment. Yeah, Bud Light was just “calculating profit” when it alienated its customer base.

The customer base was alienated because Bud Light made one (1) custom can of beer. Not one kind of custom can, literally only one can.

Strangely, Bud Light has made special cans for pride month for years now and no one much cared. Strangely, people are boycotting Bud Light specifically and Anheuser-Busch is largely ignored. Strangely, major beer companies have had much more prominent partnerships with trans people with no similarly hysterical reaction.

This is not a story that makes sense. Even from the perspective of the modern American right it doesn't make sense. It's just a herd of people freaking out for no reason.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#122

Post by positron6000 »

the_doctah wrote: post #102
wnevets wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Race and gender swapping every established popular character? What exactly makes that "progressivism"? Also why don't you consider characters like X-23 a gender swapped Wolverine?

You don't think diversity is progressive? Also, yes of course I consider X-23 to be a gender swapped Wolverine.

wait wait wait - you think that the characters not being all white men is "progressive"? that would mean that reality is progressive, right?

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#123

Post by yongjik »

anankaie wrote: post #9

> “The problem isn’t Kathleen Kennedy.” I am not entirely sure that matters. Pissed-off fans undoubtedly want to see metaphorical blood for what, to their eyes, was a forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories. At the end of the day, the buck stops at the top. Chapman was already punted as a general scapegoat, but is it enough?

I have no love for the extravagant dumpster fire that is the sequels, but "forced, ideologically-driven tarnishing of their childhood memories" could equally (or even better) describe the bunch of loud online critics who were strangely invested in attacking poorly-envisioned black/Asian/female characters, when the arcs of white male characters were honestly no better. (They were made by the same creators, duh.)

Makes me wonder if they are objecting to something else but don't want to say that part loud.

* I'm (obviously) not saying all online critics are like that: it's really easy to hate these movies, they're a total mess.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#124

Post by the_doctah »

Timon3 wrote: post #114
the_doctah wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments about what Disney thinks is popular amount to nothing but conjecture on your part. Meanwhile, the sequels were not well received by fans. And, while I'm certain you would make the argument about the movies making money, they underperformed with regards to expectations. Merchandise did not sell. Solo lost money because of the bad sequels. Spin-offs were canceled. So, regardless of market research or what…

> So, regardless of market research or whatever, the end result was not good. Do you believe I'm trying to say anything different? You're arguing against something that is not my point.

You just seem to think Disney has the absolute worst market research on the planet instead of admitting they are trying to push ideological messaging.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#125

Post by the_doctah »

Timon3 wrote: post #115
the_doctah wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they had one marketing executive making the decisions, who was subsequently thrown under the bus. Get your facts straight.

> No, they had one marketing executive making the decisions, who was subsequently thrown under the bus What did I write that you think you're disagreeing with here? I didn't specify the amount of marketing executives who made the decision, so what are you trying to say I should get my facts straight on?

>I'm sure they made a risk analysis - and if you look at other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry, you'll see that it's more bad luck than anything else that the conserviative media machine focused so much on them.

You're throwing around ridiculous speculation.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#126

Post by Amezarak »

theshrike79 wrote: post #95
runesofdoom wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the showrunners for Rings of Power instead? Amazon went for the best mix of young, talented and well-rexommended they could find, and they blew it.

The Tolkien estate blew it. Amazon could only use Silmarillion, NOTHING else. They were seriously hampered on what they could touch without getting sued.

They couldn’t use the Silmarillion, only LotR, including appendices, which Tolkien had sold the film rights for long ago when he was in financial distress.

Christopher Tolkien, his son and close collaborator, hated the movies and likely was not interested in licensing anything, regardless of price. I think he was right. Since he has passed, I expect that will change sooner or later.

Even so, blaming the licensing is absurd. The writers had carte blanch to write a new, original story set in the Second Age, or flesh out the framework in the Appendices - which, by the way, is almost all Tolkien’s writing on the Second Age anyway, so they’re not missing much. They blew it because they can’t write, not because they couldn’t get all the material they needed. They deviated from all the material they did license anyway, keeping basically only character names and the barest outline of plot (magic rings are made), they changed literally almost everything else they “adapted”. Blaming the Tolkien estate is a ridiculous diversion from the utter mediocrities that are running all these major franchises.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#127

Post by Timon3 »

the_doctah wrote: post #125
Timon3 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, they had one marketing executive making the decisions, who was subsequently thrown under the bus What did I write that you think you're disagreeing with here? I didn't specify the amount of marketing executives who made the decision, so what are you trying to say I should get my facts straight on?

>I'm sure they made a risk analysis - and if you look at other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry, you'll see that it's more bad luck than anything else that the conserviative media machine focused so much on them. You're throwing around ridiculous speculation.

Well, there definitely are other transgender influencers paid by other companies who were spared this moral outcry. So what is the ridiculous speculation? That they made a risk analysis?

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#128

Post by kaycebasques »

drdec wrote: post #70
kaycebasques wrote: post #50

> “To get the Force back, Lucasfilm needs to reconnect with its Joseph Campbell roots—the inner set of mythologies we’re all hardwired to that motivated Lucas to create Star Wars in the first place,” said Schiffer. Oh, lord. I really hope they don't follow this playbook. The hero's journey is SO played out. I honestly think there is a huge market for stories that do NOT revolve around saving the world/galaxy/universe…

Perhaps but would the Star Wars universe be the right setting for them? Probably not.

I think it can be. There still needs to be drama and adventure and action. The story just doesn't need to always revolve around saving the galaxy. I think this is why the Mandalorian has been so successful and interesting. He is a character that is never really trying to save the world. He gets sucked into it every now and then, but then again a lot of his episodes are just cool adventures of a person living an interesting life.

There is also the idea about why Disney and these other big companies are buying franchises in the first place. I read somewhere (probably here on HN) that these media companies realized that people like to get invested in a particular story universe. They don't want to have to keep getting used to new universes, they want to see the universe that they like from different angles. So in that regard I think this strategy makes strategic sense as well.

Re: ‘The Force has left Lucasfilm’: how Disney can salvage its $4B investment

#130

Post by Timon3 »

the_doctah wrote: post #124
Timon3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, regardless of market research or whatever, the end result was not good. Do you believe I'm trying to say anything different? You're arguing against something that is not my point.

You just seem to think Disney has the absolute worst market research on the planet instead of admitting they are trying to push ideological messaging.

No, I am not. I'm saying they don't care about making good movies, only about putting in what market research is telling them they should. My version of things doesn't rely on a conspiracy to push ideological messaging like yours, it only relies on market forces and big companies coming together to create a lazy and bad product that still sold, albeit under expectations (because, surprise, people care about quality).

Just stop for one second and consider this - is there literally no way to increase the quality of the movies without changing the "ideological messaging"? I think there are tons of ways, e.g. by removing the incredibly annoying slapstick humor overpresent in Episode 8. So why didn't they try to make it better? If they want to push ideological messaging, why not at least put effort into the movies, so your messaging is effective?

Post reply on HN